the countryside being surrounded by
farmland be watching crops grow
harvested and being able to buy direct
from farm shops but then the other day
in London I was watching a van unload
now to slogan on the side and it said as
fresh as it can get and it was unloading
strawberries into a restaurant and then
it made me wonder do we believe slogans
do we ever ask the question especially
when eating out where has our food
actually come from was it part of last
year’s bumper crop stored it just the
perfect conditions to now be available
still was it imported or is their
technology available that’s allowing a
farmer to grow strawberries here in
March how many of you here want to eat
seasonally by UK produce foods support
the British farming industry or buy
local produce in order to reduce your
food miles in your carbon footprint but
baby work full time and that local green
grocers on the way home closes at five
o’clock so you rarely make it there on
time or baby of a busy social life
planned for your week ahead and you
don’t want to buy things in that you
probably won’t get round to eating
before they pass their best or a family
to juggle and that local weekly Sunday
farmers market just isn’t sufficient for
that big shop and so if you’re anything
like me if it’s not being ordered online
then it’s a trip to the local
supermarket it’s easy it’s convenient
and it’s what we’ve become accustomed to
over the past 30 years it’s a place
where seduced into to quote a phrase
coined by food writer Johanna Blythe
Minh was seduced into shopping in a
permanent global summertime aisles a
freshly colored produce readily
available with very little seasonality
do we ever question that we might pay
attention to the country of our
virgin that bag of baby spinach arrived
here from Morocco but maybe you watched
a recipe video on social media earlier
and you have to make it now before you
forget about it forever I’m sure I’m not
the only person here who’s seen a recipe
online and then rushed out and purchase
an ingredient that they’d never even
heard of before but living this way when
we’re in the city it can’t remain the
norm in the 1980’s the global population
stood at 4.5 billion today that figure
is 7 billion people with around half
living in an urban area and it’s a
widely accepted prediction that by 2050
that figure is going to be 10 billion
for the most half living in an urban
area and put some kind of context on
that growth from now until 2050 that’s
taking the entire population of China
and India plus a few million more and
adding it together or to bring it closer
to home is the current population of the
United Kingdom x a hundred and fifty
three that’s a lot more people to feed
and a lot more people being totally
disconnected from their food supply
chain consider the pressure will replace
more natural resources currently seventy
percent of fresh water consumption is
used in agriculture all of that water
that we pour into the land with only
small amount being taken up by the plant
itself but what about when there’s a
flood or a drought as we’ve seen in
recent months food rationing is
introduced and yes some of us may have
found the food rationing slightly
amusing on the ice web lettuces because
has anyone ever purchased three iceberg
lettuce at one time it’s served to
highlight the fragility of our food
supply chain and food security in
general both the topics we need to
seriously start thinking about the salad
shortage of 2017 may seem like they’ve
passed this now but that’s only because
supermarkets have source of produce from
further afield and discussions indicate
that this
in a blip but the potentially the start
of things to come country should be
looking after their own population
before exporting so is the answer to
only eat UK produce when it’s in season
well not necessarily as the University
of Sheffield carried out research that
showed some of the UK’s countryside has
only a hundred harvest left in it with
some urban plots of soil being richer in
nutrients than some farmland so that’s
more reason for us all to go out and
grow our own on the Fertile rich soil of
the city or good luck because my local
London allotment closed our waiting list
five years ago and that list still has
200 people on it so maybe we need to
stop looking out onto the horizon for
better growing methods maybe we need to
look up maybe we need to look for a
vertical growing revolution and that’s
what we’re doing at grub urban farms
we’re the uk’s first commercial
aquaponic vertical farm and we’re doing
it all from a warehouse in East London
so we have fish and the fish we use take
their waste and we store the
nutrient-rich water until it’s required
by the plants in which turn we flood the
benches or irrigate the plants and the
roots filter the water that then get
recirculated back to the fish and we’re
growing salad greens micro green salad
leaves micro greens and herbs and these
are some of the most perishable of all
produce if you’re flying it in how long
has it taken to get from the farm to
your plate and we’ll use it with not
using soil with sowing seeds by hand on
recycled carpet with seeding harvesting
and packaging by real humans we’ve
created permanent jobs in an industry
mostly associated with seasonal workers
and we’re paying a London living wage a
regular salary in an industry being
propped up by us as consumers are
constant desire to buy cheaper foods and
also what we’re doing isn’t new
technology traditional farmers in China
would quite often add fish to their
flooded rice paddy fields and when the
harvest when it was ready to harvest
then the farmer had fish and rice but on
the farm we are also reducing delivery
times we can harvest package and deliver
all on the same day so if you’re talking
about solids that’s an extra three to
five days of shelf life so hopefully
going some way to reduce your food waste
so our farm we have 12 fish tanks and
they contain to lapeer and these are a
fresh white water fish and if you’ve had
a fish curry recently then you’ve most
likely eaten tilapia and they’re great
fish for farming due to their feed
conversion ratio it takes around 1.2
kilos of feed to enable a fish to grow
one kilo in size now if you compare that
to cattle that requires eight kilos of
feed in order to obtain one kilo of meat
so it’s a sustainable source of protein
and then our grow room we have eight
benches which are all ten floors high
and that’s 16 square meters of floor
space converted into a hundred and sixty
square metres of actual growing space
but that one hundred and square 160
square meters will get you around
200,000 bags of salad a year that’s a
3800 people a bag of salad a week so
we’re going to be a little short if we
want to feed the city so let’s not end
it here let’s dream big if you go to the
outskirts of any city you’ll find
industrial parks empty warehouses once
home to businesses that have now gone
overseas to cheaper locations we can
turn them into farms we could put 10
times the number of fish tanks that
would then be the ability to produce
48,000 fish year and if we’re going ten
times the size let’s go ten times of
floor space in the grow room and then go
twice the height that would then be the
ability to produce four million bags of
salad a year that’s 80,000 people a week
but we’re only limited by our size so
let’s go Depot size and if we’re going
deep oh sorry
we could diversify the crop range if we
wanted to they might need more height to
grow or maybe the plants would need more
time than the salad leaves we currently
grow well maybe they need more lighting
but if we’re obtaining it from a
renewable energy source then why not and
then the next mission we want to reduce
food miles and every city every major
town has empty warehouses let’s turn
them into farms let’s bring food and
employment to each city and then let’s
look at closing the circuit even more we
could feed the fish insects or but a
farm near to an energy source say a
manufacturing plant here instead of
releasing all of their heat into the
atmosphere we could use it to power the
farm let’s look at ways to console let’s
keep looking at way to constantly close
down that circuit let’s ensure we keep a
level of food security for future
generations that we have been so lucky
enough to enjoy let’s make sure we keep
food diversity to which we’ve become so
accustomed to without having to search
for it from further and further afield
let’s make sure we don’t eat a way off
this planet [Applause]